DESCRIPTION: (Applicant Abstract) This project is submitted in response to the NIDA Research on Drug Court RFA to increase the retention of Drug Court participants in a rural state. The overall goal of this study is to provide information that can be used to develop and improve Drug Court retention and reduce recidivism. This project capitalizes on completed pilot work with Kentucky Drug Courts. Over the project's five-years, a sample of 500 Drug Court participants from two Kentucky Drug Courts-rural Warren County and small metropolitan Fayette County -will be recruited and randomly assigned to a manualized employment focused enhanced intervention or to a control group-Drug Court as usual. Two hundred and fifty (250) participants will enter the study at each site with measurements at baseline, six-months, and 12-months after Drug Court graduation or termination. The project, with its rural focus, randomization, and comparisons will help fill a knowledge gap in the Drug Court intervention literature on less-populated areas. The specific aims are: (1) To identify and describe individual characteristics of Drug Court participants; (2) To implement and test the effectiveness of an enhanced intervention which focuses on obtaining, maintaining, and upgrading employment among Drug Court participants by randomly assigning study participants to an enhanced intervention or a control condition-Drug Court intervention as usual-and to follow-up study participants who graduate and terminate in order to examine outcomes at 6 and 12 months; (3) To examine a causal model for Drug Court retention and reduced problem behavior in which criminal history, employment history, drug use history and previous treatment effect problem recognition, motivation and readiness to change problem behaviors, and employment barriers, which in turn effect the length of time subjects remain in Drug Court, and consequently the quality and wages from employment, drug use, and criminal behavior controlling for demographic characteristics; (4) To evaluate the cost of the interventions and the cost-effectiveness of the enhanced intervention relative to Drug Court as usual; and (5) To disseminate project results.